TOPICS OF THE DAY.
CLASSES.
NOH•A,-DATS, " classes " are every thing, and individuals count for nothing : Tom, Dick, and Harry, may starve : but we are enthu- siastic in our desire to benefit "the poorer classes." It would not be difficult to show that it is possible by good advice and judicious assistance to enable this or that man to rise out of the "indigent class," but that a " class " is an abstract idea, to which we can do neither good nor harm. The indigent man may be bettered in his circumstances ; the only way of doing good to the indigent class would be to make it cease to exist. But we are more inclined to point out at present the mischievous effects of this way of talking and thinking upon the persons classified. Every man's happiness depends upon his own personal exertion : he may fail in the struggle for it, but without the struggle he has no chance of getting it. Now this new doctrine, that the working classes are to be raised in the scale of comfort en masse, has a direct tendency to weaken the spring of self-exertion. There is a plau- sible appearance of generosity in the maxim that an operative ought to look upon his own personal interest as of secondary importance when compared with the interest of his class ; but the necessary practical application of this doctrine is, that every man should be able to earn a fair day's pay; which in the operative's interpretation means, that the weak, the indolent, and unskilful, should receive the same wages as the strong, the skilful, and the perseveringly industrious man. The true doctrine is, Look to yourself in the first place and to your class, if you choose to belong to a class, in the second Place. Nature has given to every man, with very few exceptions, the means of earning his own sustenance : it is his duty to earn it. Nature has so made man that he feels pleasure in doing good to others : he has no right, be has no power, to enjoy this pleasure, any more than any other pleasure, unless he earn the means by his own exertion. When he has earned more than he can or cares to spend upon himself, then he can do good to his neighbour, but not before. Herein consists the folly of combinations for high and uniform rates of wages, independently of the violence by which those com- binations have generally sought to enforce their mandates. One man's work is worth more to his employer than another's : to say that all shall earn alike, is to say that the best worker shall not put forth all his strength. A man's work is worth more to one em- ployer than another: to say that all employers shall pay alike, is to say that men shall hire themselves to none but those who can afford the highest wages—that they are to remain idle unless they have the good luck to meet with the most profitable employment. The necessary consequence of all such regulations regarding wages must be to diminish employment and to diminish production. What the strong, skilful, and industrious lose, is not gained by the others. There are more than there were before the regulation who cannot earn any thing, or who cannot earn enough ; and those of their fellows who but for the regulation might have had some surplus to help them have been tied up from earning it. This is no fancy picture. We have heard a good deal about colliers lately. In the memory of men now or lately living, every collier in the West of Scotland might turn out as much coal in a day as he could, and was paid in proportion to what he turned out. But the men, partly jealous of some earning more than others, partly afraid that the accumulation of stocks of coals might drive their masters to employ fewer bands, insisted that no man should be allowed to turn out more than a certain quantity of coal in a day. The masters agreed : the price of coals kept up, more coal-pits were opened, and more colliers employed : the price of coals began to fall, and masters were obliged to reduce wages. The colliers were obliged to devise a means of evading their own act : they allowed each man to take a boy down the pit with them and to turn out some more coals in the boy's name. The state of the Scotch colliers is very wretched—the premature exertions of their children are harrowing to read of; and they may be traced in a great measure to their own foolish notion that the class can be be- nefited at the expense of the individual.
There is another way in which the industrious poor have allowed themselves to be misguided by the will-o'-the-wisp "class." They call themselves "the working class,"—as if all men did not belong to the working class. Men do not live idly because they have property : it costs them labour even to keep it together. The man who lives only to eat and drink and make merry, will soon be reduced to the condition of what all admit to be a " working " man, or lower still, of a beggar. By "working classes," our poorer friends mean those who earn their daily bread by their manual labour ; they persuade themselves that all in this condition have a common interest apart from the rest of society ; and they make it a point of honour to "stand by their order." The practical contradictions into which this abuse of words leads them are startling enough to all but themselves. They denounce all in the employment of Government as idlers, and enemies to the working classes ;. and yet they acknowledge as belonging to the working classes the paid orators, secretaries of associations, and others, who are to them what Government officials are to society at large. They organize themselves apart from the rest of society, and tax themselves to support, in the persons of their leaders, a feudal aristocracy of their own, who being too genteel for handicrafts take to politics as a profession. So long as the operatives, or a large proportion of them, insist upon keeping themselves distinct from the test of society, marshalled under leaders of their own, they must expect to find themselves regarded with a jealous eye by their neighbours. And all that any man can gain by joining such an association, is the certainty of never being able to become a capitalist—never able to better his own condition—and of being obliged to tax himself to support the orators, secretaries, and others who prefer such a scrambling life to settled industry.
This " class" work is mere folly. Every man must be the maker of his own fortune, be it good or bad ; no man can help his neighbour except in so far as he has earned the means by his own exertions ; and no man can help that airy nothing a class. The best service that can be done is to break down as much as pos- sible the notion of classes. Two things there are in this country • which mainly contribute to give a seeming reality to the classes in which society is supposed to be divided. The first consists of all those artificial regulations of commerce in its widest acceptation— restraints on the acquisition and transfer of property—which tend to diminish production. Property will distribute itself fairly enough if left to itself, provided only there be plenty of it. Where there is less meat than mouths, there must be a scramble ; and many who have all the will in the world to be steadily industrious must go out empty. It is the angry feeling of people in this condition that makes classes—discontented and dangerous classes. The other source of classification alluded to is the distribution of political power. In this country, where property constitutes the title to the franchise, all who are without other means of support than their capacity for toil, are by that distinction marked out as different from the owners of property. Society is thus divided by law into two classes. The exclusion from the franchise is one of the chief bonds of union among the "working classes " : it is this in a great measure that keeps them banded in menacing array apart from the rest of society. In every country, there always will be rich men and podr. In every coun- try, the son of the rich man will start in life with advantages ; and as talent is pretty equally distributed, and superior abilities are sometimes hereditary, in every country there will be a natural aris- tocracy. But where Nature has fair play, new men will be con- , stantly rising from the ranks, and men born to wealth dropping down among the poor. Every institution or law that impedes this natural play and reaction, has a tendency to give that factitious reality to classes in society which endangers its peace and sta- bility.
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